On autopilot

Skills are gained through effort. Automation relieves effort. There's always a tradeoff, but because the relief comes immediately whereas the loss of skills manifests itself slowly, we rarely question the pursuit of ever greater degrees of automation. Recent case in point: Pilots' "automation addiction" has eroded their flying skills to the point that they sometimes don't know how to recover from stalls and other mid-flight problems, say pilots and safety officials. The weakened skills have contributed to hundreds of deaths in airline crashes in the last five years ... "We're seeing a new breed of accident with these state-of-the art planes," said Rory Kay, an airline captain and co-chair of a Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee on pilot training. "We're forgetting how to fly." Something to think about on Labor Day....